


show me home and I will go (you taste like wine)

by heartshapedcandy



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 14:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12060702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/pseuds/heartshapedcandy
Summary: an alternate universe where Waverly drives Nicole home (in 2.07) before she has a chance to sober uporWaverly and Nicole fall a little bit in love





	show me home and I will go (you taste like wine)

Nicole doesn’t say much as Waverly coaxes her into the passenger seat of the Jeep, just sways slightly, leaning heavily on Waverly’s shoulder until she can collapse against the plush, leather interior. Waverly heaves a sigh, tucking wisps of loose hair behind Nicole’s ear and rearranging her arms inside the vehicle until she can close the Jeep door without fear of it catching on her sleeve.

She circles the Jeep to the driver side door, gritting her teeth at the bitter wind that rolls in from the prairies south of Purgatory, cutting through sharp-edged wild rye and tossing the bottlebrush to-and-fro. It slips beneath the thin hem of her jacket with knife-keen hands, and she becomes painfully aware of the icy-slush seeping through her boots. It takes her two tries to get her car door open, the cold holding it stubbornly closed, and when she finally slips into the driver’s seat she finds Nicole, sitting mournfully silent, in the seat next to her.

Waverly cuts her eyes sideways at her, feeling a warm flush at her girlfriend— _her girlfriend_ —slouching low in the straight backed seat, lip pouted. Waverly bites back a smile, determined to stay mad for just a little while longer, and fits the key into the ignition. The car starts angrily, coughing up a few chokes of gasoline scented air, and Waverly takes another moment to curse the weather.

She doesn’t drive, not yet, taking a second to fiddle with the heat dial, clicking through the radio stations before stopping absently on a song she knows Nicole loves.

Nicole sits straighter at this, lolls her head back against the seat and purposefully meets Waverly’s eyes.

“Am I still in trouble?”

The words are slurred, soft around the edges, but the edge of worry comes across clear as day.

Waverly sighs, fingering the steering wheel slowly before turning in her seat to face Nicole square on. She bites at her lip before she answers and thrills at the way Nicole’s gaze momentarily drifts from her eyes to her mouth on reflex.

“You might be.”

Nicole’s pout deepens, and she leans hard against the gearshift, pressing in as close as the seats will allow. Her hand drags slow across the distance between them before settling high on Waverly’s thigh. Waverly tries for a glare, shaking her loose.

“You were in a strip club,” she hisses, “with my _sister_.”

Waverly knows the why. She’s proud of Nicole for protecting Wynonna like she asked, for loving her, for caring enough to even try for a lie. But years of Champ, a lifetime of Wynonna dodging in and out of Purgatory on a whim, means distrust tastes particularly acrid on Waverly’s tongue.

Nicole’s brow furrows and she slumps back into her seat. “I didn’t even look,” she says, words strung high, “none of them were you.” Her forehead creases further and she moves again, this time fitting her palm over Waverly’s cheek. “You are so pretty.”

Waverly flushes at the compliment and tries to hide it behind another admonishing glare. “You already said that.”

Nicole hums low in her throat, rubbing her thumb over the strong arch of Waverly’s cheek. “I could never say it enough.”

Waverly turns away quickly, and Nicole’s hand falls from her face. Waverly can see Nicole’s pout out of the corner of her eye and does everything in her power not to kiss it away. She shifts into drive, tightens her hands on the solid leather of the steering wheel, and pulls away from the snow laden lot, tires spinning free of the slush.

Nicole stays quiet for a few restless moments before she is tilting again across the gearshift, smoothing a hand over Waverly’s thigh. Waverly shivers at the bite of nails through the thin, black spandex of her leggings.

“I like you,” Nicole says. Her lips settle at the shell of Waverly’s ear, words huffing warm against her skin.

Waverly exhales shakily, white knuckling the wheel, trying to remember if anyone ever told her the proper protocol for keeping your hands in the recommended configuration when your sloppy-drunk, insanely hot girlfriend comes on to you.

Somehow, Waverly doesn’t think Driver’s Ed covered this.

“You already said that, too,” Waverly reminds her, and Nicole laughs, dragging her lips from Waverly’s ear to that patch of skin at the crux of her jaw, trailing a line of kisses down her neck.

“I love it when you wear your hair like this,” Nicole murmurs, “You look like a princess.”

She presses a lingering kiss to Waverly’s throat before pulling away, fixing Waverly with a half-lidded gaze from a distance. And _gosh_ , somehow that’s worse. Because now Waverly can see Nicole’s pretty fairytale mouth and her tousled mane of red hair and her come-hither bedroom eyes and oh _gosh_.

“Nicole,” Waverly says, jerking her eyes back to the road, “stop distracting me.” She tries to scold, but her voice comes out breathy and high, and when she clenches her thighs tight to keep from squirming, she knows Nicole sees.

Nicole sighs, turning to the window and propping her head against the cool glass. She mumbles something, her words liquid-soft and small, and Waverly strains to make it out.

“What was that, baby?”

Nicole pulls back from the window long enough to repeat herself. “Can I at least hold your hand?”

Waverly makes a noise that catches halfway between a whine and a laugh, offering her hand across the center console. Nicole takes it happily between her own, bending Waverly’s fingers carefully and petting soft over her knuckles. She brings their joined hands to her mouth, pressing a careful kiss to Waverly’s palm.

Waverly thinks if Nicole was any sweeter she would melt.

Nicole glances out the window before turning again to Waverly, nose scrunched tight.

“Where are we going?”

Waverly squeezes her hand. “To the homestead, silly.”

Nicole brightens. “You aren’t dropping me off at home?”

Waverly snorts. “What? So Calamity Jane can nurse your hangover?” Waverly slows for a stop sign, easing gentle on the break to keep the Jeep from jolting. “I don’t think so.”

She looks both ways reflexively, though she knows the odds of seeing another car at the crossroads are slim. They are officially in backwoods territory now, the road of crushed gravel stretching toward slate grey sky, fringed by yellowed, snow-laden wheatgrass and jutting overhangs of limestone. The mountains blur to purple streaks in the distance, swallowed by a thick, cotton mist that settles low in the basin of the valley.

Waverly comes to a complete stop anyway. Because, y’know, precious cargo and all that.

She hums quietly, absently switching on her blinker. “I like taking care of you, anyway.”

She doesn’t get much warning before Nicole kisses her, just the squeak of protesting leather and Nicole’s mouth covering her own, warm and insistent and so, so welcome.

Waverly has enough sense to shift into park, freeing her hands to tangle in Nicole’s hair, pressing forward over the gearshift, knees digging awkwardly into the arm of the seat, leveraging herself halfway onto Nicole’s lap.

Though Nicole is the one who spent an afternoon drinking for three in a dingy bar, Waverly is drunk on this. She’s reeling from the taste of peppermint schnapps on Nicole’s tongue, from the whiskey stoked heat throbbing between her legs. Her head buzzes in a foggy, blind ecstasy, and her vision blurs, narrows, to Nicole, Nicole, Nicole.

Nicole is a little sloppy, not her normal level-headed reverence. She’s all teeth and tongue, their profiles pressed tight, her kisses landing just off Waverly’s lips, catching on the corner of her mouth, her nose, her jaw.

Waverly turns her head to the side, holding Nicole’s head close against her neck until she feels blunt teeth scraping bruises at her throat. She laughs, the noise muffled by their joined, heavy breaths, by the pitch and sway of the Jeep.

Nicole answers with a smile that Waverly can feel against her pulse point, a stretch of lips and teeth, her tongue licking out in a lingering messy kiss.

“Baby,” Waverly whines, breath hitching as Nicole ducks her head to nose at her collarbone. “You’re drunk.”

Nicole hums, half-shrugs. “You taste so good.”

“Oh, fuck.” Waverly throws her head back, fingers scratching desperately at the nape of Nicole’s neck.

Nicole’s hands find her waist, pulling her properly into her lap, coaxing Waverly’s thighs to frame her hips. She lifts her head enough to fix Waverly with a tipsy, punch-drunk grin. “You smell like strawberries.”

Waverly laughs loud, tipping forward to knock their foreheads, aligning their matching smiles. “That would be the stripper glitter.”

“We should invest in some,” Nicole says, tilting forward to smack a kiss at Waverly’s cheek.

Waverly rolls her hips, thrilling at Nicole’s quick inhale. “Is my cheerleading uniform not enough?”

Nicole’s eyes blink wide, owlish, as though just remembering. “Oh darlin’, it definitely is.”

Nicole’s accent is stronger when she’s drunk, like the alcohol pours her syllables liquid and long, all drawl and twang.

Waverly’s hands find Nicole’s face, cupping at her jaw, fingers trailing down the nape of her neck, curling around dainty ears. She sits back in Nicole’s lap, moving in a slow grind, watching her pupils dilate and darken, teeth digging rough into her bottom lip, the beginning of a smile dimpling high in her cheeks. Her eyes, usually so clever and intent, blink wide and round, stunned, erring on the side of star-struck.

Waverly knows that it’s a look all for her, and she whimpers, smoothing her hands across broad shoulders and strong curves.

Purgatory has always acted something like a prison. An inescapable labyrinth of habit and memory and smoking guns. But with Nicole, warm and alive and arching underneath her, Waverly feels like she's found a door she could actually walk through.

She feels Nicole’s hands smooth underneath the hem of her shirt, stroking up to the underwire of her bra, fingers splayed wide. She tilts her chin up, eyelashes dark against her cheeks, and Waverly stoops to meet her.

The blare of a car horn jolts them apart.

Waverly jerks back so fast she slams her head against the ceiling of the cab, and Nicole slumps so low in the seat she just about disappears.

“Shit,” Waverly hisses, trying to extract herself from their tangle of legs, her head smarting. “Who would even be back here?”

She chances a glance at the truck pulled to a stop behind them and—

“It’s Wynonna.”

Nicole groans, managing to slump even lower. “We’re never going to hear the end of this, are we?”

Waverly takes another peek in the rear view mirror, finds Wynonna somehow simultaneously flicking her off and giving her an encouraging fist pump, and clambers back into the driver seat with a sigh.

“No, we are not.”

**

Wynonna disappears into the house before Waverly even has a chance to park the Jeep.

Nicole stares after her before lurching for the door handle. “We should go check on her.”

Waverly slams the brake, reaching over the console to grab at Nicole’s arm. “No baby, let’s give her some space.”

Nicole succumbs to the tug of Waverly’s hand easily, but her brow stays creased. Waverly smiles, over-fond, and slides her hand to Nicole’s cheek, brushing mussed hair behind her ear.

“She’s been through a lot. She probably needs to sleep it off.” She wrinkles her nose, tapping at Nicole’s cheek. “Kinda like you.”

“Can I sleep with you?” Nicole’s face flushes red, and she hurries to correct herself. “I mean—”

Waverly laughs. “I know what you mean.” She pauses. “And yes, you can.”

She pops the door of the Jeep, hopping down to the frozen ground carefully, shivering as the cold creeps back under her collar. She circles the Jeep before Nicole can fumble open the car door, helps her into the house with one hand pressed to the small of her back beneath her jacket.

Nicole turns into her as soon as they make it over the threshold, leaning in for a quick kiss.

“You are,” she says, words spaced wide, voice serious, “so pretty.” Then. “You're my favorite.”

Waverly ducks low to hide her blush, leaning into Nicole’s chest until she feels her arms circle her waist.

“I should put you to bed,” she mumbles. “You’re talking crazy.”

Nicole drops a kiss to the top of Waverly’s head, and when she pulls away she’s grinning. “Crazy for you.”

Waverly leans back, scrunches her nose. “That didn’t even make sense.”

Nicole pouts and Waverly rolls her eyes, pushing at her waist until she stumbles backwards toward the stairs. Nicole takes them one at a time, pausing every other step for a kiss or a smile or, at one point, a pat on the ass. They are both in hysterics by the time they reach the top, alternately shushing each other and clinging to shoulders and waists, doubled over. It’s only after Wynonna chucks a boot into the hallway that they retreat to Waverly’s room, still laughing.

Waverly sobers once they reach the room. Cool blue light filters through the gauze-shrouded window, blurring the hour into a mirage of dusk. The bed, a plush excess of pillows and blankets, hums in their peripheral like a promise.

She pushes the door closed carefully before arching onto tiptoe, tugging Nicole’s jacket off of her shoulders and onto the floor. Waverly hooks her fingers in the front of her belt and Nicole melts easily, letting Waverly guide her to the end of the bed, sitting without complaint when Waverly presses her down.

Waverly kneels, unlacing Nicole’s boots one by one, tugging them off before kissing her knees, her ankles. Nicole says nothing, just watches Waverly in a daze, her eyes glossy, a rosy blush mottling the pale line of her throat.

Waverly undresses her slowly, pressing her mouth against Nicole’s skin in warm, charting kisses, dragging her lips across plane and ridge and muscle.

In a way, it feels like research. That thrill of discovery, exploration, reaction. Nicole’s head tipping back, lips parting. The way she unfolds to Waverly’s hand at her knee, to Waverly’s warmth settling between her legs.

Waverly finishes tugging Nicole’s pants off her ankles and smooths her hand down Nicole’s bare calf, pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh. She stands carefully and Nicole eases back onto her forearms to watch her. Her hair is a shock of color against the white duvet, and her eyes droop low, caught in a syrupy, half-asleep daze.

Waverly undresses quickly. There is no show to her movements, no performance. She kicks free of her tight leggings, pulling her blouse over her head. She rolls her shoulders, definition rippling across her skin as she tenses in the mid-winter chill. Nicole hums quietly and reaches out for her with a dopey frown, like these seconds of not touching are too much of a nuisance to bear.

Waverly crawls onto the bed to meet her, peeling back the sheets and coaxing Nicole under the covers. Waverly curls into her side, tucks her head under Nicole’s chin, nuzzling into cool skin, pressing her lips in a prolonged kiss against the hollow of her throat. She still smells faintly of her perfume, and Waverly runs her fingers along the slope of her sides, nosing kisses against the swell of her breasts. She takes Nicole’s fingers against her mouth and kisses at her fingertips, tasting snow and gun smoke, the lingering scent of detergent.

Nicole’s arm loops around her back and she pulls Waverly half on top of her like a second blanket, sighing happily when their legs tangle beneath the sheets. They press close from calf to hip to belly to breast, static and sleep-warm.

Daylight filters pearly and cool through the parted curtains, but the moon slivers nebulous in the open sky, chasing the sun back toward the waiting horizon.

Waverly closes her eyes.

**

Nicole wakes alone. She groans quietly, rolling toward Waverly’s side of the bed and finding nothing but cool sheets and the lingering impression of her perfume.

Her mouth tastes cotton-dry and stale, and her heartbeat pounds behind her eyes, nausea pressing high in her throat. She rubs hard at her eyes, squinting at the blue-green glow of Waverly’s alarm clock.

It’s only 3 am, grey-black night teetering on the edge of morning, and Nicole wishes Waverly would come back to bed, settle in the sling of her hips and sleep for a little while longer.

But Nicole knows Waverly better than that.

She groans again before swinging her legs out of bed, recoiling at the cold floor. She is only wearing her bra and briefs, and fragmented memories of the day before flash, serpentine and slippery, at the edge of her consciousness.

She remembers the bar and the man, remembers too many shots and the weight of the gun in her boot. She remembers Wynonna and the frozen plains east of town and that sucking vortex of hell. Things get blurrier after that, but she remembers enough to recall Waverly grinding against her lap at a vacant crossroad, remembers Waverly on her knees, remembers her honey-sweet smile and the lick of that clever, pink tongue.

Nicole remembers enough to ache.

She massages her temples, trying to stave off more flashes of Waverly, crossing the room to root through the drawer in Waverly’s dresser that is slowly housing more and more of her things. She settles on a baggy t-shirt, leaving her legs bare.

She pads slowly toward the hall bathroom, hoping she will find Waverly there. Instead, Nicole finds nothing but cold linoleum and a toothbrush, unopened, waiting for her on the counter.

In that moment, alone, standing half-naked in a frigid bathroom staring at a purple toothbrush, Nicole falls in love so hard and so fast it’s a wonder that she can breath after the impact.

She brushes her teeth slowly, still caught in the unsteady space before dawn. Time feels liminal, transient, and the stars stretch vast outside the thin, shingled walls of the homestead. Beyond the property, the plains are just impressions of shadow, and wind howls lonesome through the forest’s skeletal remains.

Somewhere in the salt flats to the west, a witch is crying.

Nicole brushes her teeth in front of a mirror in a house at the edge of Purgatory and falls and falls and falls.

**

Nicole descends the stairs carefully, her feet clumsy with sleep, keeping one palm flat against the worn, blue beadboard, a tether to reality. The house is drowning in gloom. The hanging scarves and jackets, Wynonna’s throw pillows, all turned shapeless and haunting in the dark.

She reaches the bottom step and pauses, tilting her head and inhaling deeply. She can hear humming, absent and lilting, and the air smells like coffee. Watery light leaks into the hallway, staining the creaky floorboards in motes of translucent gold, and Nicole follows it to the kitchen.

That’s where she finds Waverly, her legs long and bare, wearing nothing but a sports bra and shorts, leaning thoughtfully over the kitchen table. Papers and leather-bound books litter the surface, stacked so high it’s a wonder the table doesn’t bow beneath the weight. Scraps of paper with Waverly’s scrawled notations fan across the counter, and Nicole feels a thrill of affection throb high in her chest.

The coffee maker gurgles on the counter, dripping methodically into the bulbous glass carafe. Nicole leans against the doorway and grins.

“I hope you made enough for two.”

Waverly squeaks, straightening in surprise, clutching her hands against her chest. When she looks up and sees Nicole her face softens, lips curling up, hands fluttering back to her sides.

Nicole stands looking at her for what might be forever, caught between dawn and Waverly Earp’s smile.

Waverly looks so good, all muscled, toned skin, and that careful angel-sweet smile that belongs to 3 am. Nicole thinks if she didn’t have the doorway to support her the sight of her girlfriend— _her girlfriend_ —would be enough to topple her right over.

The both move toward each other at the same time, two magnets caught in the inevitability of their attraction, lovers from opposite poles. Waverly shuffles onto tiptoe, hooking her hands around Nicole’s neck, carding her fingers through her hair.

“Did I wake you, baby?” she asks, soft, tilting her chin up like she’s waiting for a kiss.

Nicole obliges, pressing in close, nudging their lips together until she can kiss her proper, sleep loose and open. Waverly hums happily, licking into her mouth, tracing the blunt edge of Nicole’s teeth with her tongue. Nicole’s hands move to span Waverly’s waist, pulling her close, hip to hip.

Nicole pulls back first and Waverly pouts, eyes still closed, lashes fluttering against her cheek. When she blinks them open her pupils are blown wide, her iris just a sliver of color.

“Is that a yes?” she asks quietly, gaze fixated on Nicole’s mouth.

Nicole shrugs. “I think my body just missed you.”

Waverly sighs, a little exasperated, and pushes light at Nicole’s shoulder, spinning out of her grasp. “You are ridiculous, Nicole Haught.”

Nicole grins and gestures around the room. “I’m not the one solving supernatural mysteries in the dead of night.”

Waverly wrinkles her nose, shrugs. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Nicole steps closer, catches her up again in her arms, bending to press a kiss against her neck. “You could have woken me up,” she says, voice a purr, “I would have thought of something.” Nicole punctuates her sentence with a bite at the soft skin under Waverly’s jaw, and Waverly answers with a low whine.

Waverly turns her head, baring the long slope of her neck to Nicole’s mouth, her palms smoothing over Nicole’s chest and—

“Do you feel sick?”

Nicole jars back, brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”

Waverly frowns. “Like, hungover?”

Nicole shrugs, pressing her fingers to her temples and considering her headache. “Nothing too bad.”

Waverly is bustling toward the stove before Nicole can stop her, flicking on the gas. “Let me make you something to eat.”

“Baby,” Nicole says, a note of adoration creeping high in her voice, “you don’t have to.”

Waverly turns to shoot her a smile over her shoulder. “I want to.”

She arches high onto the balls of her feet, reaching for a cupboard above her head. Nicole crosses the kitchen quickly, settling close behind her, nudging her against the counter with her hips.

“What do you need, cutie?”

Waverly leans back against her, turning her head to brush a kiss against Nicole’s shoulder. “Frying pan, please.”

Nicole fetches it easily, careful not to upset the teetering structure of stacked pans that she suspects Wynonna has something to do with. Waverly sets it on the burner, turning again in Nicole’s arms, kissing her long and soft and sweet.

“What was that for?” Nicole asks, the words caught between their lips.

Waverly pulls back with a smile. “Just because.”

Nicole feels that lurch low in her stomach, feels her heart stutter and sigh, and oh, oh, oh this is what it is to be in love.

**

Waverly drops thick, fatty slices of bologna into the cast-iron skillet, cutting incisions quickly across their surface as they pop and bubble in the pan. Nicole watches absently, curled around her back, chin settled in the curve of her shoulder. Her fingers smooth over Waverly’s sides, from the bottom of her bra to the low-slung waistband of her shorts, and she strokes her thumb carefully over the raised tissue marring Waverly’s ribs.

Waverly shifts against her, only remembering the spatula when the meat begins to crisp and brown. Grits simmer on the back burner, and Waverly adds another pinch of salt, licking the remnants from her fingers.

A howl echoes mournful across the grassland and Waverly cocks her head, glancing out the window.

“It’s a coyote,” she says quietly, cracking an egg on the rim of the pan, letting the yolk and whites slide into the hot grease. She pronounces it in two syllables, words pitched high, and Nicole thinks she could listen to her speak forever.

The howl sounds again, closer now, and Waverly listens hard, squinting at the dark band of sky. “She’s only about a half mile away,” she says. She flips the egg. “Coyotes live in bands,” she says, absent, like she doesn’t even remember she’s talking. “But she sounds so lonely.”

She turns her head, an unspoken appeal for a kiss, and Nicole obliges. The angle is all wrong, and it’s a little sloppy, lips catching on cheek, chins bumping. But Nicole feels the heat of it ring as true as the flicker of blue flame that ignites the burner, and when Waverly laps thoughtlessly into her mouth, she tastes salt.

**

It’s the dewy grey of almost morning when Waverly sets a plate in front of Nicole at a space cleared amid the stacks of sizable tomes. Nicole looks down at the food and smiles.

“So is this dinner or breakfast?”

Waverly swats at her from across the table, fitting two mugs of coffee on the table, a bowl of sugar between them. “Hush, you.”

Nicole accepts the coffee gratefully, leaning across the table to peck a kiss on Waverly’s cheek. “Thank you for taking care of me, Wave.”

She is surprised to see a blush settle at the high slant of Waverly’s cheekbones, watches her duck her head, somewhat bashful. “Of course.”

Nicole sighs happily, spooning sugar into her coffee. She ends up with granules dusting her fingers and, before she can wipe them away, Waverly reaches for her wrist, bringing Nicole’s hand to her mouth, sucking her finger clean.

Nicole watches the flash of Waverly’s tongue, wet and pink behind biting white teeth, and heat drops low between her legs.

She swallows hard. “I take it I’m not still in trouble then?”

Waverly blinks slow and grins, devilish and sharp.

“You might be.”

**

Wynonna finds them in the morning, tangled close on the living room sofa, fast asleep. She considers waking them but, in a rare stroke of benevolence, decides against it. Waverly has a hickey the size of the entire Midwest on her neck, and Wynonna makes a note to tease her about it when she wakes.

She walks to the kitchen to scavenge the last of their coffee, now cold, and behind her Waverly and Nicole curl closer, settle.

Their breaths mirror each other, caught in an echo of synchronicity. Nicole’s eyelids flicker, and she tilts closer unconsciously until Waverly is tucked carefully in the crook of her neck.

She dreams about falling.

**Author's Note:**

> im all about nicole and waverly cooking grits at 3 am, if you wanna talk about soft, supernatural hunting girlfriends you can find me at nevervalentines.tumblr.com


End file.
